5 min readMay 24, 2026 06:25 AM IST
First published on: May 24, 2026 at 06:25 AM IST
First, full disclosure. No creature on this planet terrifies me as much as a cockroach. The terror this insect invokes in me is so great that I find it hard to say its name in conversation and usually spell it out letter by letter. My wicked younger sister exploited my dread to her advantage when we were small children. Her superpower was to somehow seek out cockroaches everywhere so she could wave them in my face and watch me flee for my life. A scar on my left knee is from one of these episodes when I ran so fast that I fell down a flight of stairs.
Last week for the first time ever, I began to take a fresh look at this creature with new eyes and with politics in mind. I have spent the past two weeks in a Swiss village and so it was only when I got back to Mumbai that I discovered that a nascent political outfit that calls itself the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) has caused such incredible political panic that the mighty Home Minister of India asked ‘X’ to kill its account. This order was duly obeyed and within hours it had reinvented itself under a new handle.
In the shortest time the CJP has managed to garner so much social media attention that it is has more followers than the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress put together. When I consulted my new best friend Claude about this, it confirmed that, ‘As of May 21, 2026, the Cockroach Janata Party’s Instagram account had over 16 million followers — a staggering 1,400% increase in a single day — along with 200,000 followers on X.’
It is no wonder then that when I posted on X about the CJP, my timeline filled up instantly with abuse from the BJP’s two-rupee trolls. I was warned that I seemed to be supporting a Pakistani plot. That it was funded by the CIA, that Abhijit Dipke who started the CJP was one of Arvind Kejriwal’s proteges. That he believed in violent revolution and reservations for Dalits and opposed the abrogation of Article 370. These charges were accompanied by personal attacks on me that questioned my patriotism. I am used to being trolled so I mention this only to make the point that it is time that our ruling party stopped being so thin-skinned.
Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, this party has gone from strength to strength, and he personally is regularly described as the most popular political leader in the world. So, what is there to fear from an entity that has barely been born and that seems more like a satirical attempt to mock our mainstream political parties than anything else? Could it be that under the veil of invincibility that shields the Modi government, there are today a bunch of scared, aging political leaders who are terrified that a younger political party could end up taking them on one day?
The CJP’s instant social media success appears to be mostly because young Indians are unhappy with our established political leaders and desperate for new leaders who would give them more hope? As someone who travels into small towns and villages, I can report that the biggest problem is the absence of jobs for young, educated Indians who aspire to a higher standard of living. Everywhere I go, I meet young people who are ‘graduates’ but who have failed to find employment after they leave college. These are young people who are too poor to ever hope to migrate to other countries in search of jobs and a better life but not rich enough to start living the middle-class dream.
Less than five percent of Indians ever manage to travel abroad so it is here in our own beloved homeland that they hope to see their lives improve.
These are the same young Indians who once placed all their hopes and dreams in Narendra Modi when he first became prime minister. And things have improved for India. We have better roads, airports, train stations and ports.
There has been a huge jump in prosperity at the very top and millions of very poor Indians have been lifted out of poverty because of welfare schemes and generous handouts at election time. But, for the people in the middle there has been little change and now that dark clouds hover over the world economy, a deep desperation is beginning to grow and spread.
The opposition parties have failed totally to use this desperation for their own political ends and are perhaps as startled by the upsurge of support that the CJP has garnered at least on social media. Clearly there is room for a new political party to emerge even if it comes dressed up as a cockroach. It is entirely possible that by next week we will hear no more about cockroaches in politics but if there are alarm bells going off in the highest echelons of political Delhi, it is a good thing.
Those ensconced in their cocoons of political power need to be reminded from time to time that they are there because of ordinary people who rest their hopes and dreams in their votes. They do not ask for much. They want to be able to live in decent homes, send their children to halfway decent schools and live their lives with dignity.
